110 NOMENCLATURE. 



sions recorded in the Bodmin Gospels, may also for the most part 

 be better referred to Saxon than to Celtic roots. I think all the 

 manumitters', most of the witnesses', and some of the serfs' names, 

 are iDlamly Teutonic. 



Many of the Celtic names of places, in Domesday, are hard to 

 be identified. This arises not only from changes that have taken 

 place in the lapse of time, but also, in part, from the Inquisitors 

 being ignorant of the Celtic tongue ; they would, therefore, find 

 it very difficult to catch and express correctly the sound of the 

 name they heard; and, in consequence of ignorance of writing 

 and spelling on the part of those examined, if they asked " How 

 do you spell the name"?" they would perhaps receive such an 

 answer as was given in the Peak of Derbyshire, "It never was 

 spelt ; " and when they had got accustomed to Tre, Pol, and Pen, 

 and, wishing to be accurate, inquired which it was, they would 

 perhaps be told it did not signify.''^ Errors too, doubtless, arose 

 (as I think may be seen by comparison of the Exchequer t with the 

 Exeter Domesday, which latter is fuller and more accurate) from 

 the scribes, who coj)ied from the rough original notes, mistaking 



fashion, been suffixed to the Celtic Tre, &c. Thus we have Treharfut, ren- 

 dered in Pryce " The town over the vault." But Barfoot is an Old Norse 

 name ; it was the surname of a King of Norway, given either because he 

 went barefooted, or because he had a foot like a bear ; and it is now common 

 in Scandinavia. Tretharrup, which is repeated several times in the County, 

 with various orthography, puzzled me till I met with the Danish name 

 Tharrup=Thorp. Trewoof may be Wolf's-toivn, rather than "{/le llackbirds- 

 town; " and Trefreock may be FreocK s-toion. (This is a Domesday name). 



* On second thoughts, this answer would scarcely be given in the 

 Conqueror's time, when Cornish was the vernacular, and the inhabitants 

 would, as a matter of course, name places correctly ; but in later times, this 

 has been the cause of many errors and misfits. Entries in parish registers 

 are not to be trusted, as very commonly the clergyman is not a native of the 

 county, and can make little of the strange names, when he hears them for 

 the first time. One, I know, wrote Chynhale (the house on the moor) " iS7ie- 

 nail." Little help is to be got from many of the people themselves. Asking 

 an old woman whether her name was Avis Tr<'7iberth or Pc?;berth, she said : 

 " Either ; which yoiu' honour pleases, it does not signify " ; though one means, 

 or may mean, " the dwelling by the cove," and the other " the headland by 

 the cove " ; all the old woman cared for was to get her share of the charity 

 I had to distribute. 



f See the admirable Paper by the Eev. J. Carne, of Merther, in No. IV 

 of this Journal. I think some help may be got in the attempt to identify 

 the places named in this record, by the study of the meaning of the names ; 

 thus, Cudawoid may be rendered " Woden's wood " ; as also may Cosawis, in 

 Gluvias, and so Cosawes may be Cudawoid. 



